[asia-apec 44] Reflections for the Manila People's Forum on APEC

[Mario R R Mapanao]

sharing with you all the piece Obet is responding to [asia-apec 43], as he
gave the name away.

Looking forward to an interesting discussion....

Mario M.

Dear Obet

Thanks for your comments. Mario was right in keeping my name out of it
till now, but I can let you know that I wrote the ruthless critique of
NGO politics of persuasion and APEC.

Now, concerning your critique of globalisation. I agree that TNC and MNC 
are not useful terms. I would go further, though, and call it global
capital. Because corporations can always be represented in solely
institutional terms - as borderless private enterprises as it were. But
these TNCs, MNCs, etc continue to share with the British East India
Company and all the early capitalist vanguards of colonial empires a
very important characteristic - the fusion of political power and
capital. Global capital implies this link to political power, both to
national governments and to globocop organisations like the UN and
neoiberal globalisers like the World Bank. 

In thinking about this linkage to political power I must say that I
disagree with the solutions you propose. I do not believe that national
political elites can in any way be better than global capital. There are 
two reasons for this: firstly regardless of the occasional clashes with
th "West" dictators like Mahatir have acquired personal wealth and
political power through direct linkages to global capital. Japanese
capital is no less destructive and exploitative than "Western" capital.
Yet Mahatir's Look East Policy fostered the enmeshment of Malay
political elites and a weak capitalist class with Japanese capital. At
the same time he inflicted upon the ethnic Chinese policy a brutal
policy of ethnic management: continued marginalisation of ethnic
Chinese lower classes and  - ironically - the further privileging of the
ethnic Chinese capitalist class. 

You just have to look at the nationalist anti-Western political leader
Suharto to see these links. All of these political leaders and their
cicrle of elites have joint ventures with global capital and directly
benefit. 

Second: much of the disagreement between political leaders like Mahatir
and leaders of currupt, unworkable democratic regimes in the West stems
from the relationship between the local capitalist class and the state,
and the neoliberal agenda of exposing these capitalists with competition 
from global capital. It is not about social justice, or anything to do
with the improvement in the lives of the mass of the people. In today's
world so such leaders - in Asia or the West - exist. 

Nationalism has a progressive history in the context of decolonisation.
But nationalism was also used to consolidate the power of the new ruling
elite in post-colonial regimes. None of them came from the lower classes
and many of them were at one time part of the colonial state apparatus.
Furthermore, it was this nationalism which saw not the destruction of the
colonial state but its takeover. So many of the technologies of state
power exercised today are the same as the colonial state - military,
police, local administration, etc. Even maps are based on the colonial
state's enforcement of the colony, so what was the colony is now the
nation-state. So there are more Armenians in Iran than in Armenia, and the
people of East Timor are "free" to be Indonesian in the post-colonial
order.

Finally, nationalism has been used to enforce sacrifices on the mass of
the people. The sacrifices are never even. The brunt of the sacrifice - in
terms of collective social and political rights, economic and political
participation, the right to strike, etc., the sacrifice of food for the
sake of rising exports, of land to the local capitalist class, etc - is
borne by the workers, peasants, farmers, fisherfolk, repressed ethnic
groups, and still colonised peoples. Lee Kuan Yew's nationalism led to the
repression and murder of dissidents and social activists, and so did
Mahatir's in 1987 and Suharto - well, always! It is not enough to blame
all of the social violence of markets, and domination and exploitation of
capitalism on global corporations. Political elites have used nationalism
and their links to global capital to consolidate their own power and to
create indigenous capitalist classes which are no less exploitative of the
local people than capitalists from the West.

I've run of steam .... I'll wait for your response.

In solidarity